


The Crossroads

by LT_Aldo_Raine



Series: A Year in the Life [6]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angel Wings, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Demons, M/M, Souls, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25001788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LT_Aldo_Raine/pseuds/LT_Aldo_Raine
Summary: Babe watched, helpless and mesmerized, as a ginormous pair of gorgeous black wings unfurled from behind the man. “Holy shit.”The stranger’s beautiful eyes narrowed, and in that second, the wings were gone and the streetlights ceased to flicker. “You should not blaspheme.”OR: The Supernatural AU that Tec kinda(?) asked for, aka BabeRoe wing!fic.
Relationships: Babe Heffron/Eugene Roe
Series: A Year in the Life [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618882
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	The Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThrillingDetectiveTales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/gifts).



> Okay, but basically this is _Supernatural_ with Babe as Dean and Gene as Cas????
> 
> Admittedly, not a lot of wings in this wing!fic, but _hey!_ , they’re there, and they’re _pretty_.

i.

Babe was three months away from completing his third tour of duty when it happened—and it happened the way it always did.

First, there was the normal tension of rolling through a crowded market in Tikrit, Iraq, then came the sickening recognition that _something wasn’t right,_ followed swiftly by the panicked _ah, Christ, no, no, no, dear God, no—_ and then, _boom_!, lights out in Heffron City.

The lights came back on moments later for Babe, only, they never came back on for Julian at all. Trapped inside the Humvee, both Bill and Joe had been blown to shreds, and while Babe scrambled over to his best friend’s fresh corpse, Luz hopped on the radio to call in an emergency medevac for the pair of them. The worst part about the insurgent attack was that due to the nature and the severity of the ambush, they’d been forced to leave Julian’s body behind.

When they were eventually able to retrieve the body, the corpse had been so mutilated that Julian’s family had no choice but to hold a closed casket funeral.

ii.

Babe rotated home fourteen weeks after Julian died. Once stateside, he was unsurprised to discover that while he had changed, Philadelphia had not.

Bill, Joe, and the rest of the neighborhood boys tried putting on a brave face, not just for Babe’s sake, but also for their own. Bill made seemingly constant jokes about his missing limb and how he was the world’s sexiest paraplegic. Joe, who had recently undergone another survey—this time to remove a staph infection that had set in after his last operation—, was understandably less comedic about losing a leg, but maintained a brave face, nevertheless.

“Hey, I’m just happy to be home, ya know?” The words and the implications therein, especially when spoken in Joe’s gravely and naturally solemn voice, weighed heavy on Babe’s mind.

Babe couldn’t be happy. Not when everything had gotten so fucked up. Three tours, they’d made it through nearly three tours together, and then suddenly Julian was dead and Bill and Joe were fucking amputated and—Babe was so goddamn angry that he didn’t know what to do with himself. Moreover, there he was, suddenly, “free”—absent of both the purpose and the structure provided by his now-former life in the army.

Those first few weeks home, he was a wreck. He drank too much, got into too many bar brawls with civilians, and ignored too many of his mother’s phone calls. Things only got worse after he started seeing this headshrink down at the VA. The guy was nice and all, he was a vet himself (did two tours in Fallujah), but the meds only made Babe crazier and the mandatory sessions made the redhead so irate that he drank himself into a stupor after every single visit.

Babe came home, but Julian didn’t, and nothing in life had ever seemed so unfair.

iii.

It was a local legend. Babe hadn’t thought about it in years, but one morning after a session with Dr. Lipton and a corresponding evening of drinking, Babe found himself wondering through the southside with a mouth full of hot, bad breath, a bit of throw up on his shirt, and seventy-three dollars less in his wallet when he stopped to slump down on a park bench in Marconi Plaza. That was when the redhead spotted it—the crossroads where S Broad St bisected I-76.

The local lore was that back in the 1940s when the Phillies were struggling to draw in the wartime crowds, the team’s manager suggested an exhibition game against Pennsylvania high school all-stars and that when teenage pitcher Curt Simmons heard about the upcoming game, he’d come to that very spot beneath the interstate and made a deal with a crossroads demon—his soul for a chance to dazzle the Phillies' major league lineup. And dazzle he did. Supposedly, the Phillies offered Simmons a contract that very day, and he was pitching in the MLB before the year was out.

In the years since Simmons made it big, scores of folks had wandered beneath the I-76 overpass and offered up their souls to a demon for fame or money or love, and as a running joke whenever somebody from Philly made it big, the locals liked to attribute their success to the crossroads.

In that miserable space between the last fading light of drunkenness and the oncoming gloom of hungover, Babe Heffron eyed the crossroads and snorted. _What a load of bullshit._

iv.

Okay, but the thing was—when this didn’t work, there weren’t any real consequences aside from Babe looking like an ass, which was his semi-permanent state of life as of late, so who the fuck cared? Conversely, on the very off chance that it _did_ work, then he’d have his fucking best friend back, and wasn’t that the whole goddamn point?

Babe teetered on his feet beneath the interstate smack dab in the middle of the road where it crossed S Broad. Around him, the neighborhood was quite save for the occasional distant rumble of a car and the steady hum of the AC units in the windows of the apartments on the corner. The streetlights blurred before his eyes, and Babe rubbed the balls of his hands into his eye sockets—but that just made him dizzy.

Fuck, but he was so drunk.

“So, we gonna fuckin’ do this thing, or what?”

He’d either shouted that or whispered it. The redhead couldn’t really tell.

After a tense moment of waiting and staring at the emptiness surrounding him, Babe let out a chuckle. “Fuck, this is stupid.” He glanced around, but he was still alone. “Oh Jesus.”

Taking another swig from the whiskey he still carried in the brown paper bag from the convenience store on 17th, Babe let the too warm liquid slush around the back of his mouth, then slide down his throat. And honestly, wasn’t this hilarious? Christ, he was such an idiot. Laughing to himself, Babe checked his watch—it was almost four a.m.—and addressed the void air. “Well, I’m sorry I missed ya, pal! Was gonna make ya a helluva n’offer, but— _ah_! Maybe next time.”

He turned on his heel in a motion that was both difficult and sloppy. He made it all of one step and half a sort-of-shuffle before he noticed the guy. The first thing Babe thought was _ah, fuck I’m about to get mugged_ , which was followed swiftly by the more humorous realization that Babe was broke and the guy wouldn’t get much off of him besides a losing lottery ticket, two dollars in cash, and an already maxed out credit card. Babe’s next thought was more of an observation about how the guy with his dark eyes and dark hair and sharp jawline was attractive in kind of a dangerous way.

“Hey, pal.” Babe hoped his voice sounded sultry, but he knew on some level that it probably just sounded slurred. “Look, man, all’s I got s’this—” He shook the brown bagged whiskey at the stranger. “Ya thirsty?”

The man raised one immaculate eyebrow. “You said you had an offer?”

Babe blinked. Then, he swayed a bit on the spot. “Wha’? Nah, I didn’t.”

“I believe your exact words were ‘a helluva n’offer’...” The man peered at Babe expectantly, and the redhead swallowed hard.

“Look, buddy, I—” he began, but the handsome stranger cut him off before Babe could continue.

“What is it exactly that you’re after?” His dark gaze raked slowly, calculatingly over Babe’s tall frame. “Let me guess, you want money.”

Babe’s brow furrowed. The only thing he was losing more rapidly than his interest in this impromptu conversation was his buzz. “Buddy, I don’t wan’ your fuckin’ money, alright?”

The man hummed, thoughtfully. “You don’t seem like the fame hungry type... is it a lover you seek?”

“A lover? Whatta ya a hooker or somethin’?”

“You brought me here for something. What was it?”

“I didn’t bring you nowhere, pal.” With an angry huff, Babe backed away and snapped, “I’m outta here.” Only, the second Babe turned away from the mysterious other man, the stranger appeared suddenly in front of him, mere inches from his face. “Jesus Christ!”

With a smirk, the man purred, “Not quite.” Then, his eyes turned solid black.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, hell.”

“ _Bingo_.”

“Wha’—what happened to y-your eyes?” Babe was feeling extremely nauseous, abruptly, and he nearly doubled over from the spinning in his head.

“I think you know.”

“This ain’t real. Ya not real.”

With a sudden lurch, the man seized Babe by the wrists and grinned wickedly, “The name’s Speirs, and I’m here to make you a deal. So—” he demanded. “ _Tell me what you want_.”

Eyes blown wide, Babe froze as all the air rushed out of his lungs. A heartbeat passed, then two. Another. Through his alcohol-induced haze, Babe struggled to think, but there was something pressing in the stranger’s gaze. It zapped straight through to Babe’s soul, and the redhead began to speak. “Julian, John Julian. S’my best friend. I want him back. I want him back and alive and _home_. And Bill n’Joe—I want their legs back. No more surgeries, no more PT. I just want m’friends to be alright again.”

The demon grinned. “Deal.”

v.

The next morning, Babe spent several hours hidden beneath his comforter, blinds drawn, nursing the worst hangover of his life. When he finally managed to crawl out of bed, he headed straight for the toilet where he divested himself of the complete contents of his stomach. At some point—after slurping down water from the bathroom sink and gargling some mouthwash—, Babe shuffled into the kitchen to scrounge up something to help settle his stomach.

And that’s when shit got weird.

“I wondered when you were going to finally exit the batcave.”

In an instant, every hair on Babe’s body stood on end and a tingle slipped up the man’s spine. “...Julian?”

Sure enough, sitting in his usual seat on the couch, a comic book open across his lap, lounging in flannel pajamas and a University of Alabama sweatshirt, was John Julian, Babe’s best friend. Babe’s _dead_ best friend.

“Ah, fuck, I’m hallucinating now? Christ.” Babe rubbed at his eyes furiously, groaning. “Man, this ain’t happenin’. This can’t be happenin’. This is the last damn thing I need right now.”

“What’re you seeing?” Julian asked, conversationally. “Is it the Oompa Loompas again? Or clowns this time?”

“ _Julian_.” Babe’s heart clenched. He looked like Julian—all floppy hair and sun-kissed freckles dotting a dopey face—, and he sounded like Julian, just that barest hint of an old southern drawl. But Babe knew rationally that this couldn’t be happening. “Jules, you’re dead.”

On the couch, Julian closed his comic book with a snort. “Since when? And why didn’t anybody tell me?”

“Since—fuck—since Tikrit, man, and that suicide bomber and—and the _ambush_. Ya been dead for months. Your _ma_ had your funeral. You—you’re fuckin’ _dead_ , Julian.”

A frown slipped onto Julian’s face, and he asked, softly, “Hey, Babe, do you think we should maybe call Dr. Lipton?”

Anger, swift and hot, coursed through Babe and sent a painful throbbing straight to his temples. A fresh wave of nausea followed instantly thereafter, and with a weary breath, Babe turned back to the bathroom with a vicious snarl. “Fuck this.”

vi.

The following morning, Babe chalked up his strange hallucination to a particularly malicious nightmare and headed off to work with a dull headache, already looking forward to hitting up his resident bar after clock out.

Except, when he slunk into the warehouse, he was greeted with the sight of Bill Guarnere leaning against a barrel, legs— _legs_ , plural!—crossed at the ankles, going off at the mouth with some wild tale about a joyride through Dutch farm country. Babe hovered just inside the door, mouth agape, until Bill spotted him and snapped, “The hell is ya problem, Heffron? You waitin’ for a fuckin’ personal invitation, or what?”

Without a word, Babe left and returned to his apartment, disbelief and confusion warring inside him. Ration and logic screamed that he was one eaten-crayon away from the nuthouse, but hope was the damnedest thing.

“Hey, Babe. Did’ja forget your work gloves again? I’m sure you could’a borrowed some from—” Julian’s words slammed to a halt as Babe yanked him off the couch and pulled him into a crushing bear hug. The shorter man came into Babe’s arms stiffly but was quick to return the affectionate gesture, rubbing a small circle into the redhead’s back.

Tears sprang to Babe’s eyes. He couldn’t believe it. Julian was real. He was—

vii.

For the first several days, Babe kept waiting for the dream to end, to wake up one morning to find his apartment barren yet again and Bill and Joe back on crutches. But that morning never came. Whenever Babe made references to the Tikrit ambush, the others always looked at him like he was off his meds, and no one else ever questioned the sudden change in reality.

Two months into Julian’s return, Babe stopped second guessing it. Julian was back, Bill and Joe were healed, and Babe forgot all about the handsome, crazy stranger and a crossroads deal.

viii.

Babe forgot about the handsome, crazy stranger and a crossroads deal, that is, until exactly one year after Julian’s miraculous return from the dead when the stranger appeared at the foot of Babe’s bed just after the stroke of midnight.

Bolting upright, Babe reached for the sidearm in the top drawer of his nightstand, but the man’s eyes flashed black. “Won’t do you any good, I’m afraid.” A blood curdling smile twisted the demon’s lips. “We made a deal. Time to pay up.”

ix.

Hell was—well, it was hell. It was worse than every horrible day Babe had ever had—and he’d survived some pretty shitty days back when he was topside. The pain and torment were constant and indescribable. There was no way to track time.

This was Babe’s _forever_ , or it was supposed to be.

x.

Hell was dark, dank and humid like a cave, but one day, Hell went white in a brilliant and devastating flash of pearly, white light, chased by a golden glow.

Then, Babe woke up.

xi.

Standing beneath the I-76 overpass where it intersected with S Broad St, Babe was _starving_. And thirsty. And tired. Goddamn, he wanted a nap.

Although it was early afternoon judging by the sun’s position in the sky, traffic was nonexistent in the South Philly neighborhood that day, and Babe found himself faced once more with a handsome stranger.

“Who’re you? How’d I get here?”

There was something _different_ about the man, something that spoke to his otherworldliness despite the simplicity of his appearance. His clothes were unremarkable—he wore a simple pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt—, but his dark eyes and blue-black hair were striking. His gaze, intense and profound, pinned Babe where the redhead stood. “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.”

“Per—what?” Babe frowned, then glanced around, waiting for demons or hellhounds or hoards of other damned souls. But the coast was seemingly, suspiciously clear. “What’s goin’ on?”

The stranger peered at Babe, unblinking. “Edward Heffron, you are saved.”

“My name’s Babe, alright?” He winced at how idiotic he sounded, his words spewing out like a knee-jerk reaction. “Whatta ya mean I’m saved?”

“I am the angel Eugene, and you are saved.”

Babe snorted. “An angel? Yeah, right, pal.” Man, this was a new level of fucked up. Some new agony devised to get his hopes up before the demons doubled down the torture yet again. “Did Speirs put ya up to this?”

Although, Babe had learned, Speirs was primarily in sales as a crossroads demon, he liked to gander through the bowels of Hell from time to time to pay a visit to those he had condemned to damnation. Babe had seen him two or three times since he was first dragged down under.

The man with the striking gaze bristled at Babe’s accusation. “I do not associate with demons.”

“Cause you’re an angel.”

The hint of a smile graced the stranger’s lips, despite Babe’s frankly obvious sarcasm. “Yes.”

“Prove it.”

A furrowed brow and a slight frown distorted the man’s alluring face. He paused for a moment, then he gave the barest of nods. Rolling his shoulders, the handsome stranger didn’t flinch as the streetlights on either side of him began to crackle and pop. Horrified, Babe watched as the bulbs burst, glass shattering and raining down on the shorter man. But still, he refused to flinch, and Babe watched, helpless and mesmerized, as a ginormous pair of gorgeous black wings unfurled from behind the man.

Like his hair, the wings were such a deep onyx that they shined blue when they caught the light. The wings were twice the height of the man to whom they were attached and just as long. Even at a distance, Babe could tell that the long, sleek feathers were soft, and the redhead took an unconscious step forward, suddenly consumed with the need _to touch._ “Holy shit.”

The stranger’s beautiful eyes narrowed, and in that second, the wings were gone and the streetlights—those which still contained their bulbs—ceased to flicker. “You should not blaspheme.”

A startled chuckle escaped Babe. “An angel...a real angel...”

“Yes.”

Babe’s heart fluttered in his ribcage. “Why me?”

The angel’s brow creased once more, and he titled his head just so. “Because you deserve to be saved.”

xii.

Like before when he traded his soul to have Julian back from the dead, none of Babe’s friends seemed to find anything amiss when the redhead returned from Hell, alive and well. A glance at the calendar hanging on the fridge told Babe that only four months had passed, four months that had felt like an eternity down in the pit.

Babe woke in a cold sweat every day for nearly eight weeks after he was saved, waiting for the joke to end, to find himself back in Hell. But that didn’t happen.

More than once when he awoke, Babe wasn’t alone. The angel stood at the foot of his bed, just as Speirs had done when he’d come to collect Babe’s soul, and the angel would frown down at Babe, eyes piercing. “Why do you not believe you are saved?”

Babe swallowed thickly. “Because I’m nobody.”

xiii.

Six months after his return, Babe was finally making a serious attempt to move forward with his life—even if he still occasionally glanced over his shoulder looking for hellhounds on his trail. Then, one evening after a late night of dinner and drinks with Bill and Fran, Babe returned home to find Julian asleep on the couch, _Touched by an Angel_ reruns playing on the TV, and an actual angel perched on the edge of his bed.

“Eugene?”

“Hello, Edward.”

“What’re you doing here?” Babe hadn’t seen the angel in months, and though his presence itself wasn’t exactly unwelcome, with Gene came a general sense of unease that Babe had developed toward the supernatural forces of the world.

“I fell.”

Babe frowned, confused. “Fell? Fell where? You hurt, or somethin’?”

“To earth.” The angel gave Babe a pointed look, which the redhead recognized for the patronizing glance that it was.

“How come?”

Gene dropped his gaze, hesitant and aversive. “I...I rebelled.”

Babe smirked. The idea of a rebellious angel was entertaining in and of itself—Babe’s brain actively avoided allusions to Lucifer and Hell—, but to imagine _Gene_ as a rebel? It was downright hilarious. “S’at so?”

The angel’s face twisted with a nasty emotion—the first real emotion besides confusion that Babe had seen the angel openly display—, and he leapt to his feet. “This is no joke, Edward. I rebelled against my Father. I disobeyed orders and acted against the wishes of Heaven. For that, I have been cast out.”

“Cast out? What, like ya can’t go back?” The devastation on Gene’s face confirmed Babe’s suspicion. “Christ, Gene, for how long?”

Ignoring the redhead’s blasphemy, the angel replied, “For eternity.”

Babe’s gaze widened to a near-comical degree. “What—what did’ja do, Gene?”

The angel blinked, then turned from Babe. “I do not wish to say.”

“Okay...I’m...m’sorry, Gene.”

A tense beat lapsed as the angel hovered at Babe’s bedroom window, his intense gaze leveled on the street below, and in the stretch of silence, Babe mulled over any possible offenses he thought the gentle angel capable of committing. In the end, he couldn’t come up with a single one worthy of casting the angel from Heaven permanently.

After some time, Babe asked, “So, what’ll ya do now?”

When the angel glanced at him, there was a look of utter fear and hopeless haunting Gene’s face. “I do not know. I...I have nowhere else to go.”

“Oh.” Babe started. “Oh, um, I guess—well, you wanna stay here, then?”

xiv.

It surprised Babe how quickly he fell into a rhythm with his new angel roommate, how easily and effortlessly Gene slipped into Babe’s life until one day it was hard to remember the time _before_ the angel fell.

The guys took Gene’s sudden and thorough invasion of Babe’s life in stride once Bill spent five minutes with the angel-in-disguise and came out laughing. “He’s an alright guy,” Bill had said with a slight shrug, before he amended, “Don’t get me wrong, he’s fuckin’ weird. But he’s alright.”

The angel adapted to human life as best as any non-human entity could. That’s to say, there were _a lot_ of hiccups—some big, some small, and all of them entertaining and endearing to Babe. A general since of confusion and wonderment clung to the angel as he learned to adjust to the world, learning how to shave and how to use a toaster and how to avoid getting slapped by a waitress at the 22nd St diner because “no, dude, she doesn’t wanna talk about her dad abandoning their family because he hated his job at the post office, Christ, Gene.” In return for Babe’s hospitality and generosity with both his time and patience where the angel was concerned, Gene taught the redhead about Heaven. Babe’s curiosity was never ending, and on the rare occasion that he could compel Gene to speak in the language of the angels, Babe would listen with such reverence and joy that, sometimes, the angel would blush.

“You’re friggin’ awesome, Gene.”

"Thank you, Edward. You are, as well.”

“Ah, shuddup.”

xv.

A year after Gene fell from Heaven, he and Babe came home late on a Tuesday night after catching a movie—the angel was fascinated by films and had a slight obsession with popcorn—to find a blue-eyed man with a crown of soft, chocolate curls standing in their living room.

Without thought, Babe shoved his way in front of Gene, shielding the smaller man with his own body, and demanded, his voice low and hard with the edge of warning. “Who are you?”

A gentle hand fell on his arm. “Edward, this is my brother, David.”

Babe blinked, stunned. “Ya brother?”

“I am an angel of the Lord,” the cherub-faced man clarified, and despite Gene’s calming look of assurance, Babe’s unease remained. “Where’s Jules?”

“Asleep, safe in his bed.”

Gene stepped forward, a slight crease in his brow. “Why have you come, David?”

“I wanted to see for myself.”

“See what?” Babe barked. Judging by the look of discomfort on Gene’s face, his angel knew exactly what his brother had come to witness. A muscle worked in Gene’s jaw. “You need to leave. The others will not be pleased you have come here.”

David made no move to exit. “Was it worth it?”

The question startled Gene, and Babe exhaled a sharp breath. “Look, pal, he said you need to go—”

“Yes.” The answer was resolute, the single syllable echoing off the apartment’s drywall with a certainty and fierceness the likes of which Babe had never heard from Gene—the angel was not a man of many words, and when he did speak, he was often soft spoken in his speech. Puzzled, Babe stared down at the other man and wished he could understand the underlying conversation playing out between the pair of angels before him.

The blue-eyed angel made a thoughtful noise, then turned so that his body was angled towards the window. Gene’s fingers twitched at his side as if he longed to reach for his brother. “When you return to Heaven, will you tell Richard that I am sorry?”

“I do not think I am returning to Heaven,” the other angel confessed. With a small, sort of secret smile, he glanced back at Gene, “I think I will go to San Francisco. There is a soul there that I have often longed to touch.”

Gene nodded as if he understood. “Good luck, brother.”

David’s gaze flickered to Babe before it cut back to the angel at his side. “And you.”

There came the sound of fluttering wings, and then the other angel was gone.

“What—the hell—was that about?”

Gene’s brow furrowed. “That was my brother...”

“No, nuh huh. You don’t get to pull that ‘I’m a new human and I don’t understand’ bullshit tonight. Ya been down here long enough, Gene. You know exactly what I mean. So, tell me right now just what the fuck that guy was talkin’ about.”

Gaze downcast, Gene murmured, softly, his tone one of pleading, “Please, Edward.”

On instinct, Babe caught the angel’s hands between his own and was delighted when Gene squeezed back, long, pale fingers tangling with his. “Gene, I gotta…I just wanna understand.”

“I am afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

Soul-piercing eyes flickered up to catch Babe’s stare. “I am afraid of what you will think. I do not wish for you to be angry.”

Babe forced a playful smirk, and he tugged lightly at the angel’s hands. “I could neva be mad at ya, Gene. Honest.”

Gene frowned in that heart-warmingly too-serious way of his. “I do not think that is accurate.”

“Humor me, please. I promise I won’t get mad, alright?”

Staring one another down, Babe and Gene hovered in the living room for a tense but brief moment, before the angel eventually sighed and drew away toward the bedroom. “Alright.”

In his room, Babe switched on the bedside lamp and cast an artificial glow across the walls and ceiling. He gestured the bed, inviting Gene to sit down, and when they’d settled comfortably atop the comforter, Babe nudged the angel’s shoulder and gave him a gentle smile. “S’okay. Whenever you’re ready…”

“Do you remember…” Gene began, his voice quiet with insecurity. “Do you remember when I fell?”

“How could I forget?” asked Babe. _Best day of my life._

“I told you that I had rebelled—”

The blue-eyed angel’s words slithered around Babe’s skull. _“Was it worth it?”_ A sinking feeling, like a stone dropped into the ocean, pulled at Babe’s stomach. He steeled himself. “Gene, what did you do?”

And when Gene lifted his chin, jaw squared stubbornly, and repeated the first words he ever spoke to Babe, the redhead’s heart stopped with the revelation. “I gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.” There wasn’t an ounce of remorse or regret as Gene explained, “I had orders to…to let you rot, but I could not leave you there, Edward. I _would_ not.”

“You got kicked outta Heaven _because of me_?” Eyes wet, Babe swallowed against the rush of emotion in his throat and choked out, “Why? Why’d ya do it, Gene?”

“Because your soul was the brightest I’d ever seen.”

Suddenly, Gene couldn’t stop talking. He launched into a story about the first time that he had seen Babe—it was over a decade ago when Babe and Julian were just kids and the scrawny, Alabama native was being picked on for his accent and overalls and Babe had punched the bully square in the mouth. “That is when I knew your soul would be a good one, even if your instincts were tilted toward violence.” Then, the angel relayed the tale of the first time he had touched Babe’s soul—it was during Babe’s first tour outside of Kabul, Afghanistan; Gene had tugged on Babe’s soul to save him from a sniper’s crosshairs.

Babe gaped. “That was _you_? ...son of a bitch.”

When Gene heard that Babe had sold his soul, the angel had been filled with such devastation that he had immediately begged Richard, the leader of his garrison, to allow him to save Babe. But Richard was a dutiful son who followed orders. and he had refused to break their Father’s rules for Babe. So, Gene had rebelled—he saved Babe, and he had been cast from Heaven for it.

“Ya shouldn’t a done that, Gene. Ya shoulda just left me—”

“ _No_.” The angel seized Babe by the arms, their legs pressed together on the bed, and he spoke with a slow but unmistakable purposefulness. “You deserved to be saved, Edward. Your soul is _good,_ you are _good._ I would rebel against my Father for all of eternity if it meant that I could save you.”

Babe heard Gene’s words, he did, but his mind was chaotic, and his emotions were even worse. He couldn’t believe that Gene had been cast out of Heaven, away from his family and everything he’d ever known, because of Babe. It wasn’t right. Gene was—he was perfect. He was kind and thoughtful and selfless and funny, even when he didn’t mean to be. He was good, too. Too good for Babe, in fact.

Tears welling in his eyes, Babe sniffed against them. “M’so sorry, Gene. Fuck, I—I’m sorry.”

The angel’s brow furrowed in that lovely, familiar way. “Why are you apologizing, Edward?”

“Because this is all my fault.”

“Why do humans always blame themselves for that which is out of their control?” Gene’s hand crept up Babe’s arm to capture the redhead’s chin in an affectionate grasp. The angel swept his thumb across Babe’s skin in a tender caress. “My actions were mine alone, a choice that I made. One which I would happily make again. Do not mistake yourself for the guilty party, Edward. The guilt is mine alone, and for eternity, I shall bear it.”

“Ya shouldn’t have to.”

Wrecked with guilt and gratitude in equal measure, Babe slumped forward, exhausted, and allowed his forehead to rest against the angel’s. For a quiet moment, they simply held one another, comforted by each other’s presence and the gentle, steady thud of their hearts. Babe placed his palm flat against Gene’s chest. The angel shouldn’t have a heartbeat, and he didn’t for his first two weeks on earth. Then, as Gene’s connection to Heaven began to wane, the angel had developed his own sense of humanity. First, a heartbeat. Then, the desire to sleep and to eat. Soon, Gene had told Babe, the last ounce of his grace would fade away and Gene would be wholly human.

_“What about your wings?”_

_Gene gifted Babe with a rare smile. “Those will remain.”_

Now, with the thump, thump of Gene’s heart pulsing against Babe’s palm, the reality that Gene had forfeited his grace _for him_ slammed into Babe like a cement truck. “This has to be so hard for you.”

“It gets easier every day,” the angel confessed. “You are…helpful.”

“Thank you, Gene.” The words were heavy with emotion, the air in the bedroom suddenly thick with feeling, but Babe knew they would never be enough. He didn’t consider himself worthy, not by a long shot, but who was he to argue with an angel of the Lord? So, in that moment, Babe made a solemn vow to himself—to his angel—to _be worth it._ Babe could spend—would spend—the rest of his life attempting to make it up to Gene, to make his sacrifice worth it, and that, too, would not be enough.

“You do not have to thank me.”

“Don’t I? I owe ya everything.”

Gene cupped the back of Babe’s head, fingers gently scraping through the tuffs of ginger hair at the nape of the taller man’s neck. “And you have given me everything.”

Babe couldn’t name a single thing that he’d given Gene besides a place to crash and lesson on How to Be Human 101, but he appreciated Gene saying so, anyhow.

“Do you miss it?” Babe felt like an idiot even as the words were still tumbling out of his mouth, but Gene did not seem offended. Instead, he took a second to seriously contemplate the inquiry before he responded with a small incline of his head, “Yes. I miss my brothers. I miss our fellowship. I still have my faith, but I felt much more connected to our Father in Heaven...and, well...I enjoy earth far more than I dared hope I would, but this body is—restrictive.”  
  
“Restrictive? Whatta ya—oh, you mean your wings?”  
  
The angel nodded.  
  
“You said they weren’t goin’ anywhere. Can’t ya just...?” Babe made a vague motion and hoped this wasn’t some sort of angel taboo, like he was asking him to whip out his junk or something.  
  
“The sight of my wings would be quite startling to humans.”  
  
With a snort, Babe nudged the angel’s shoulder. “Well, yeah, genius—but not to me. M’serious, Gene, anytime you want, okay? They won’t freak me out or nothin’.”

The raven-haired angel went silent and still, eyes downcast, lingering on an old Blue Powerade stain on the carpet, and Babe feared that he had gone too far, broken some unspoken rule of divinity, an ancient offensive over the sanctity of an angel’s wings. Then, Gene shifted _,_ his knee brushing the redhead’s thigh, and suddenly, Babe was lost in a dark and ageless gaze. He always found the angel’s stare beautifully overwhelming in its eternal depths, but in that moment, there was a shine to them that spoke of something _different._ A dusting of pink across the angel’s cheeks, Gene’s voice became the curl of a whisper against Babe’s ear.

“Would you like to see them?”

“What? Ya wings?” Babe blinked. “ _Now?_ ”

Gene nodded, solemnly, and though he knew damn well that they were alone, Babe glanced around to check if the coast was clear. “Uhh—” Memories of childhood field trips to the Philly zoo bombarded the redhead, images of owls and falcons taking flight, the impressive flex of their wide wingspans, always longer, taller than Babe expected. With a guilty flutter in his throat, Babe regretted his subconsciousness’s comparison of his friend to birds of prey, but Babe couldn’t help it. Babe had seen Gene’s wings the night the angel had yanked him outta Hell, and if memory served—which it fuckin’ did; the sight of a real life friggin’ angel beneath a halo of streetlights wasn’t something Babe was ever gonna forget—, the celestial appendages were twice Gene’s height. No way in hell they were gonna fit inside Babe’s cramped bedroom.

But—but Gene watched him with an expectant sort of happiness, and Babe’s resistance-via-practicality crumbled. This was a friggin’ angel of the Lord, this was _Gene._ Who was Babe to tell him no?

“Sure, Gene. Sure, I’d love to see ‘em.”

When the angel moved to stand before him, a nervous energy shivered over Babe, and as he watched the angel grip the bottom of his shirt and peel the garment off, Babe swallowed, thickly. He didn’t remember the angel stripping last time. “Uh, whatcha doin’, buddy?”

“Without much of my grace, it will be easier to reveal my form this way.”

“Right, a’course.”

He’d seen the angel shirtless before, naturally. Seen the angel change clothes dozens of times. Hell, he’d even had to show the guy how to operate the shower in the beginning. But this felt different. This—the revelation of Gene’s angelic form—, Babe realized, bore a certain intimacy that was new to their relationship. _He’s touched your soul,_ a dangerous voice taunted, the words simmering, a seductive current running beneath the redhead’s thoughts.

And then, Gene closed his eyes, and like before at the crossroads beneath the overpass, the bedside lamp began to flicker, though the effect was somewhat lessened this time. No bulbs burst, no windows shattered. There was merely the gentle blinking of lights and a quiet hum from the radio on Babe’s nightstand as Gene’s wings appeared, called into being from some ethereal plane hidden from Babe’s human vision, curling out from behind the short angel to hover protectively about his shoulders.

“ _Gene_ …” Babe’s memory didn’t do the angel justice; Gene’s wings, that rich onyx that glistened with an enthralling blue hue under the barest hint of light, were enchanting. There were layers to the feathers—Gene would later explain the anatomy of angel wings in great detail, unveiling and sharing himself completely with Babe—, and they were stacked in cascading length, with two rows of shorter feathers near the angel’s shoulders, the lowest and longest layer nearly as long as Babe’s legs. They were _huge_ and impressive and gorgeous. Christ, they looked so soft.

Babe rose to his feet, the bed giving a groan, to better drink in his angel’s true form. The tips of the wings brushed the ceiling, and Babe realized that Gene was folding himself together in the confined space. “You can—” He made a floppy gesture with his hands, and delight rippled through him as Gene gave the barest of nods and allowed his wings to creep outward, inch by inch, the longer feathers gliding across the carpet. As if in a trance, Babe watched as they skirted over the floor. He longed to feel the same sensation against his skin, to relish in the gentle caress of what he _knew_ would be the softest touch he’d ever felt.

His hands rose, desperate to reach out and graze the black waterfall of feathers, and when he spared a glance at Gene’s face, the angel was already staring at him with a startling intensity. His heart beat a staccato against his ribs. “Gene…can I—?” Fingers flexing, he hoped the question wasn’t offensive, but he _had_ to ask. He couldn’t help it. The need to touch, to feel, to know was all consuming.

“Yes.”

The redhead released an audible sound of relief, and when the very tips of his fingers grazed the feathers at Gene’s elbow, a low whimper escaped his throat. _Heaven._ To touch Gene’s feathers was to know Heaven itself.

“Gene, I—” Babe carded his hand through the layers—there were even more than he’d realized—of feathers as tenderly as he could, his body shivering with pleasure at each slow stroke. As he shifted his attentions to the other wing, Babe caught a glimpse of Gene’s face. The angel’s eyes were closed, his thin, pink-but-almost-purple lips parted in a silent sigh. _Oh,_ but Gene was enjoying this just as much as Babe was, if not more.

Babe, well, he didn’t quite know how he _should_ feel about that, but there was no mistaking how he _did_ feel about it.

On instinct, he stood chest-to-chest with the angel and reached with both hands until his grasp was firmly buried within both wings, simultaneously. Long, pale fingers carded through, sliding gracefully through the feathers from shoulder to hip, then back upwards, Gene’s quiet sighs filling the nominal space between them. The redhead found the dual junctures where the black wings folded, his knuckles knocking the bone, and in a stroke of genius, Babe curled his fingers through the feathers of both wings and massaged each of the joints with his thumb.

His ministrations were beautifully, wonderfully, graciously rewarded.

With a sound that could only be classified as a positively catlike purr, Gene’s head fell forward onto Babe’s shoulder just as the angel’s hands snapped forward to claim purchase on Babe’s hips, fingers tangling in the hem of his shirt and the loops of his denim jeans. Babe’s own hands continued their good work, though his concentration slipped considerably when the raven-haired angel began to nuzzle the side of Babe’s neck, warm breath ghosting over the redhead’s skin. 

It was in that moment, cradling and caressing his angel with the gentle rumble of Gene’s endless purrs vibrating through his own chest, that Babe understand the simple truth that he was never going to let another living soul touch Gene in this way. This was _his_ angel. Gene pulled him from Hell. Gene fell from Heaven for him. And—oh _, Gene loved him_. Gene did this, all of this, to become human in order to be _with him_.

The realization was paradoxically both profound and simple. The truth and certainty of it consumed Babe. All at once, he felt as if he were floating, drifting toward the heavens untethered by his fleshly body; only, the silky feathers at his fingertips and the weight of his angel pressed against him grounded him to the earth. It was one of those perfect moments that seemed to exist only in daydreams that Babe had long abandoned—even before Hell, back when his days consisted of sun in his eyes and a gun in his hand and sand in his mouth. It was everything.

Hands slid over rows of onyx feathers to meet skin, skirting up to curve over the angel’s wiry shoulder until Babe could grip the back of Gene’s head. He gave a careful tug, coaxing the angel to meet his gaze, and when Babe smiled at him, a shy sort of pleasure bloomed across Gene’s handsome features. The redhead cupped his angel’s face. It was gorgeous how uncomplicated this all seemed now that Babe understood. With a gentle but straightforward touch, Babe kissed his angel.

Mewling softly against the redhead’s mouth, Gene kissed him back. 

“You love me, huh, Gene?”

The angel tucked his head back against Babe’s chest, then hummed against the pale, freckled skin of Babe’s shoulder, nose brushing the redhead’s Airborne tattoo, and Babe knew that he loved his angel, too, wings and all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie, I had _so much_ fun with this fic. <3


End file.
